All posts in Stephen Colbert

This past year has felt like a game of musical chairs in late night television, with hosts bouncing around different networks and time slots ever since Jay Leno announced his retirement, Jimmy Fallon inherited The Tonight Show, Seth Meyers stepped down from the Weekend Update desk at SNL to take over Fallon’s old gig… You get the idea. And that was just NBC. Then in early April, when David Letterman revealed his plans to retire in 2015, yet another late night desk became vacant. Rumors swirled, hopes for more diverse casting arose, and about a week later Stephen Colbert, of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report fame, was tapped by CBS to succeed Letterman. Reactions were positive, although there was some hesitation from some parties over a missed opportunity to introduce fresh faces to the late night circuit. Plus, one concern remained unaddressed: WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE COLBERT REPORT?

In a surprising but absolutely amazing answer to our prayers, Comedy Central revealed last week their plans for the 11:30 p.m. weeknight slot: a new-ish show, produced by Jon Stewart and hosted by Larry Wilmore, titled The Minority Report. Um, yes. If you’ve ever watched The Colbert Report, you know this announcement represents quite the shift from Colbert’s faux-conservative talk show. However, in a statement from Comedy Central president Michele Ganeless, it seems diversity is the network’s top priority: “The Minority Report with Larry Wilmore follows in the Comedy Central tradition – bringing new perspectives to the day’s events and breaking ground in the world of late night television.”

You might recognize Wilmore from his short segments as Senior Black Correspondent on The Daily Show. Because Wilmore is based in LA, his visits have been less frequent in the past couple of years, but every so often he comes on to have some “honest conversations” about race with Stewart. We’ve picked out some of our favorite clips of Wilmore from The Daily Show, for your procrastinating viewing pleasure:

Rep. Dan Maffei ’90, D-N.Y., is struggling to hold on to his seat, with recent counts of Tuesday’s ballots showing him behind his opponent by 659 votes. As Maffei waits for 9,000 absentee ballots to be counted, it might be time to better get to know “Star Trek” geek Maffei, as Stephen Colbert did last year. When David Cicilline ’83 joins (replaces?) Maffei in the House Brown University Caucus, maybe he’ll follow in Maffei’s footsteps — and avoid talking about NAMBLA.

In honor of today’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in DC, we bring you Sane or Not, a site à la Face Mash where people send in potential rally signs and you vote on which is the saner of the two. You may not be able to go, but you can be tangentially involved in the process.

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